The Other Dracula the Undead

Continued health-related issues again delayed the planned entry on Guy Boothby’s Pharos the Egyptian. I hope readers will enjoy my revisiting (and rewriting of)the second entry in this blog from January 2010 as it predates the greater exposure my work has received since my former association with The Cimmerian or my current work for The Black Gate. I hope to be back up to full speed and health next week. Thank you for your patience.

I belong firmly to the camp of Bram Stoker fan that approached Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt’s Dracula the Un-Dead with great anticipation and left disappointed. Well, actually appalled might be a more apt description of the reading experience. Had I not had my jaws wired shut at the time I read the book, I would have described myself as speechless. Severn House, a small press that has been kicking around for at least forty years when they took over Tom Stacey’s imprint, decided to capitalize on the attendant hoopla of a Stoker descendant co-writing a sequel to reprint an earlier literary sequel with very nearly the same title.

Freda Warrington’s Dracula the Undead was originally published to mark the centennial of Stoker’s classic original in 1997. I was aware of the book prior to its reprinting, but avoided it like the plague at the time believing incorrectly it was comparable to Elaine Bergstrom aka Marie Kiraly romanticized and anemic sequels, Mina and Blood to Blood. There is an element of romance found in Warrington’s book that does not ring true for the Stoker purist, but Ms. Warrington is a gifted British fantasy and horror author who accomplished something few writers can claim – she authored a sequel to a literary classic that doesn’t pale in comparison.

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Behind the Mask: Dr. Phibes – In the Beginning by William Goldstein

Forty years ago, American International Pictures released The Abominable Dr. Phibes starring the late Vincent Price to movie theaters and Award Books published the novel, Dr. Phibes by the character’s creator, William Goldstein. The novel serves as an intriguing variant to the camp classic film in treating the same story with a great deal of reverence and pathos. The following year Price starred in a hastily-produced sequel for AIP, Dr. Phibes Rises Again and Award Books again published a tie-in novel by the character’s creator which expands upon and corrects a number of the film’s flaws. Flash forward to 2011 and William Goldstein’s new novel, Dr. Phibes: In the Beginning has just been published.

I am not aware of any other creator having returned to his seminal work after such a lengthy passage of time. That said Goldstein had never truly abandoned Phibes. Much like the good doctor’s own quest to revive his beloved wife Victoria, Goldstein has had his own never-ending quest to re-launch the franchise with a new film or a television series. He is a rarity among screenwriters in that his literary efforts do not read like little more than movie treatments or as typical novelizations that slavishly follow the source material.

As Phibes’ creator and a fine author in his own right, Goldstein imbued his two Phibes novels of the early seventies with a tragic quality that frequently bordered on the poetic. Like his celebrated character, Goldstein had a vision of showing love as an all-consuming obsession and constructing a self-contained universe where Phibes is free to play God. This is the root of the Phibes universe and why his deranged decision to punish those he holds accountable for his wife’s death by re-creating Biblical plagues seems perfectly rational within the context.

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Behind the Mask: Dr. Phibes Rises Again from Script to Screen

Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972) brought back Vincent Price and director Robert Fuest for a second go-round with AIP’s favorite madman. Phibes’ original screenwriters William Goldstein and James Whiton penned the first draft of the sequel entitled The Bride of Dr. Phibes. While the resulting film retained significant elements from this work, AIP chose to hand the writing chores to Robert Blees with director Robert Fuest making final revisions on the produced script. Whiton and Goldstein’s sequel script would resurface several times over the years for AIP as a possible third film titled Phibes Resurrectus and later for AIP’s successor, New World Pictures for a revival titled Phibes Resurrected. Between these attempts, Goldstein came very close to getting a television series, The Sinister Dr. Phibes off the ground with comic book legend Jack Kirby providing the designs for the network presentation. A survey of the development of the sequel makes the film’s international title, Frustration seem all too apt.

The October 1971 draft of The Bride of Dr. Phibes makes it evident that Goldstein and Whiton (like many screenwriters before and since) were cheated of a story credit for the sequel since much of the resulting film’s structure is derived from their unproduced script. Phibes’ carefully planned resurrection and his scheme for reanimating his late wife are exactly as one finds in the finished film. Additionally, the central characters of Emil Salveus and his mistress Daphne Burlingame are virtually identical to the film’s central characters, Jonathan Biederbeck and Diana Trowbridge. Goldstein and Whiton focus the sequel on the Institute for Psychic Phenomenon which houses a Satanic cult led by the now adult Lem Vesalius seeking vengeance against Phibes nine years after the events of the first film. The Scotland Yard stalwarts, Trout, Schenley, and Crow return to good effect. Although Crow’s role seems better suited to his direct report, Waverley who is missing here. There’s a gripping scene set at Wembley Arena that recalls a similar sequence in one of the early Fantomas novels where the detectives think they’ve nabbed Phibes only to discover it is one of his automatons. It is obvious to understand why this script would not die and resurfaced several times under variant titles

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Behind the Mask: The Abominable Dr. Phibes from Script to Screen

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) starring Vincent Price has long been one of my favorite films. I re-visit it once or twice each year and it always retains a freshness and vitality that separates it from other movies that I love. When asked to explain why it resonates with me to such a degree, I would invariably state that it is the perfect mix of horror and comedy. It never descends into the level of a spoof, but it has a delightfully anachronistic and intentionally offbeat bent with its art deco sets, lurid murders, campy score, and over-the-top performances. The film is a valentine to the mystery fiction of Edwardian England that saw the transition from Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Fu Manchu, but filtered through modern sensibilities that delight in the sensationalistic villainy and the preposterousness of detectives matching wits with murderers as if they were schoolboys playing a game.

While all of the above is certainly true, my attraction to the material runs deeper. Viewing the film as a valentine to Edwardian thrillers sparked a thought about Halloween. For most, it is a time for children to play dress-up and collect candy from their neighbors, but there is another side to the holiday that is decidedly grim. Halloween also evokes sadness and tragedy, lost love, memories of happiness never to be reclaimed, it is fitting it is an Autumnal holiday for it is a celebration of the bittersweet and the tragic. I suspect that is the root of what leads some adults to still cling to the Classic Horror films of the last century before horror became synonymous with splatter films and torture porn. Horror used to be reflective of unfortunate lives, lamentations of those cursed or forsaken. That association is still strong for those who are out of step with the world around them and feel separated from the rest of the world by the weight of their pain. Halloween and Classic Horror are a remembrance of our painful pasts that we transfer to entertainments depicting others’ pain and torment.


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